Dracut manager sides with union over police deputy

DRACUT -- Town Manager Jim Duggan sided with the union on two grievances filed against Deputy Police Chief David Chartrand and will launch a further investigation into the release of a Dracut police lieutenant's personnel documents.

The grievances stem from an Oct. 14, 2015, letter of reprimand Chartrand wrote to Lt. Michael Fleury. But they also illuminate a greater discord within the department and a feud between Chartrand and the New England Police Benevolent Association that includes several alcohol-driven incidents in 2008 and 2009.

In his reports on the two recent grievances, Duggan wrote that Chartrand's letter to Fleury was "an audacious personalized, subjective statement I consider inappropriate and outside the context of intra-departmental communications between a supervisor officer and a subordinate officer.

He added that Chartrand's decision to send the letter to The Sun in response to a public-records request was questionable.

Chartrand wrote the Oct. 14 letter to reprimand Fleury for attempting to work 32 hours out of a 34-hour period in September, in violation of an unwritten department rule that limits officers to working a maximum of 16 out of 24 hours.

"The message that you have put forth to officers within the department is that greed is acceptable and that making money takes priority over safety," Chartrand wrote.

A portion of that letter was published by The Sun in a March 13 article about police departments' internal-affairs investigations and the entire letter was posted online on March 30.

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Chartrand sent his letter to Fleury, along with internal-affairs files on two other officers, to The Sun in response to a public-records request for all internal-affairs reports completed from November 2014 to November 2015.

Fleury alleged in his grievances that the letter was damaging to his reputation and that Chartrand incorrectly released it to the paper.

Chartrand, who some consider a potential successor to Chief Kevin Richardson, declined to comment, saying he had a "visceral desire" to state his case but did not think it would benefit anyone at this time.

In his findings, Duggan agreed with Fleury that the letter was inappropriate and should not have been placed in the lieutenant's permanent personnel file. He ordered the letter removed from that file.

Also troubling, Duggan wrote, was Chartrand's decision to release it to The Sun.

According to the Dracut Police Department's policies and procedures, the actions that warrant an internal-affairs investigation are corruption, brutality, use of excessive force, violation of civil rights, and criminal misconduct.

Fleury's violation of an unwritten rule on shift length did not qualify as an internal affairs matter, Duggan wrote, and should therefore not have been included in the response to the public-records request.

"Based upon the premise that the circumstances surrounding the writing of the subject letter did not warrant an IA investigation, it is unfortunate that given such a classification, the deputy chief released the subject letter and subjected its contents to publication," Duggan wrote.

Fleury filed his first grievance against Chartrand on Jan. 26, about two months after The Sun initially requested internal-affairs records, but well before the first article referencing the letter ran in March.

In that grievance, he said that Chartrand had broken an agreement with the union to not place a letter of reprimand in Fleury's permanent personnel file.

The second grievance came on March 19, after The Sun article ran. Fleury claimed that language in the letter was "extremely damaging" to him and should not have been released.

Richardson initially found the grievances to be without merit, but the NEPBA, which represents Dracut's superior officers, appealed to Duggan.

"I really don't have an opinion, the manager made his decision and that's what we're going to abide by," Richardson said. He did, however, question how The Sun was able to quickly obtain the grievance reports and whether NEPBA was launching a personal attack on Chartrand.

"It's pretty obvious to me that the NEPBA has something against the deputy chief," Richardson said.

The union and Chartrand have a lengthy history of mutual dissatisfaction, and Selectman Tony Archinski, who is employed by NEPBA has been one of the most vocal critics of the department's leadership in the wake of an independent audit this year that said the department was operating under a "toxic mix of fear and intimidation."

In February 2009, the NEPBA released a scathing, 60-page report on Chartrand and Richardson that alleged labor violations and physical and verbal threats.

It included a 2008 altercation between Chartrand and NEPBA Executive Director Jerry Flynn at a Lowell restaurant. Both men accused the other of being drunk and physically threatening.

Then, on Sept. 26, 2009, Chartrand was off duty attending a block party when he responded to a nearby 911 call involving a shotgun. When he arrived on the scene, Chartrand picked up the gun.

Fleury, Officer Derek Scribner, and Officer James Quealy were the first on-duty officers on the scene. Fleury and Quealy would later write in reports that Chartrand was "highly intoxicated." Chartrand said at the time that he had consumed a few beers but was not drunk.

In his own report, Scribner wrote that he almost shot Chartrand because it was dark and the deputy chief did not quickly identify himself or respond to requests to put the gun down.

In the aftermath, Richardson and Chartrand accused Flynn of pressuring Scribner to write that report.

Scribner is the subject of one of the other two internal-affairs reports that Chartrand sent to The Sun this year. He was reprimanded for missing a court date.

Like Fleury, neither Scribner nor Officer Dimitry Arkannikov, the subject of the third report Chartrand sent to The Sun, appear to have committed offenses that rise to the Dracut Police Department policy manual's strict definition of actions that warrant an internal-affairs investigation.

Arkannikov was accused in a citizen's complaint of pursuing a driver for an alleged traffic violation from Dracut into Lowell while he was off duty and in his unmarked, personal car.

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